By Mary Wagley Copp
Abia has spent all seven years, four months, and sixteen days of her life in a refugee camp in Ethiopia, waiting with her family for word on where they'll go next.
Abia calls herself a queen. Queen of the goats she herds, queen of the water line, queen of the school that meets under a tree. She's been at the Shimelba camp longer than any of her friends: seven years, four months, and sixteen days. She knows the exact number because her Papa says it out loud, and says it's too long, that they need a real home. Abia isn't sure she wants one. This camp has her best friend Salim in it, her grandmother's stories, and everything she knows how to do well. Then the word comes that they've been accepted to America, and Abia has to work out how you leave the only place you've ever lived, what you get to bring with you, and whether she can still be a queen somewhere she has never been.
Most books about a refugee child start after the family has left. This one stays in the before, and that's what makes it worth having. To Abia the camp isn't a waiting room, it's her childhood, with a best friend, a grandmother, a job herding goats, a reputation. So when America comes, it aches: she's going somewhere safer and leaving her whole life behind, and the book lets both of those be true without smoothing either one over. She's also the child who has been there longest, the one who welcomes newcomers rather than being the new one herself. If your child has ever met someone at school who just arrived from far away, this is the part of that story you rarely get to see.